


In the Cannibal Glow

by songlin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Breathplay, Danger Kink, Dubious Consent, Fight Sex, Genderqueer Character, Homophobia, Knifeplay, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Moriarty Is A Dick, Omega Verse, Past Child Abuse, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-20 02:59:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you ever wish I was an omega?” Jim says, drawing his fingertips up Sebastian’s bare arm from wrist to shoulder. “You prefer sex with omegas, especially omegas in heat. It makes you feel powerful. I can make you feel powerful.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Cannibal Glow

**Author's Note:**

> **CONTENT WARNING: This work contains some dubcon, something between mentions of and explicit depictions of child sexual abuse, transphobia/homophobia, Moran being a bit of a sexist ass, implied torture, and the most fucked-up attempts at therapy since Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham.**
> 
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> 
> No part of this is fluffy. Moran and Moriarty's relationship is not a model of an ideal relationship. Do not want a relationship like Moran and Moriarty's. If their relationship reminds you of your own, please [come this way.](http://www.theredflagcampaign.org/index.php/dating-violence/examining-your-relationship/) Also, Jim Moriarty is also not extremely educated on trans issues, and does not entirely know what he's talking about.
> 
> Also, do not play with knives or choking without safewords/tap codes/hand signals. Fanfiction should not be a sex guide, and _Mormor fanfic_ even less so. If you _do_ want to play with knives or choking, [here is a guide for the former](http://talkingsexradio.com/safe-knife-play/) and [here's something to consider about the latter.](http://dominantguide.com/176/take-your-breath-away-basics-of-breath-play/) If you're still interested, [here's some tips.](https://0thisslavegirl0.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/breath-play-how-to-do-it-without-leaving-a-corpse-behind/)

After his parents finished shouting at each other and his father fled to their bedroom in tears, Sebastian’s mother would come to him in his room, drag him out from under his bed and push him onto his knees.

“You’ll beg for it one day,” she would say afterwards, before she pulled up her pants and ordered Sebastian to clean up. “Just like your father. You’ll beg.”

It happened when he was fifteen. The heat came on slowly, almost eight days of lethargy and irritability and hunger, and then on the ninth day he woke up with his pajamas sticky and clinging to the backs of his thighs, feeling filthy and uncomfortable and _wrong_. These weren’t him, this hungry open channel to his insides and tiny leaking prick. They _weren’t_ _him_.

His father washed the sheets and cried while upstairs, Sebastian writhed on his fingers in the bathtub. When he could breathe again, when he could fucking _think,_ Sebastian asked him why _he’d_ cry, when it wasn’t _his_ arse leaking all over the fucking house. His father’s face crumpled.

“You are a strong boy,” his father said. Farsi, not English. He shared the language with his son, but not his wife. To Sebastian, Farsi will always sound like quiet afternoons eating after-school snacks that taste of sumac and barberries, and of bedtime stories-- _I’ll eat you up I love you so._ “I wanted differently for my son. This is not you.”

His father’s tears made him feel sick inside, nausea stirring alongside the roiling arousal. He couldn’t _stand_ him right now, not his small, pudgy frame or soft hands or the stupid fucking accent he had never really lost.

He sneered. “Leave me alone,” he snapped in brutal, pointed English.

His mother was overseas on a business trip. Sebastian figured he had about four days to ride it out before she came home. Maybe he’d be done by then.

His luck wasn’t quite good enough yet. Later, he’d make it better, but he was still young.

She smelled him before she walked in the door. She was strong, much stronger than his father. They didn’t fight for long. Sebastian listened to the sound of her footsteps mounting the stairs, to his father dialing the police. He imagined her pushing into his room, her hands tight on his arms, and made a decision.

He reached for the cricket bat under his bed.

\---

Twenty-five years later, he punches the wrong man in a bar brawl and comes home to find a dark-haired man in a suit sitting in his chair, leafing through a stack of papers. Sebastian has his gun out before the man can blink.

Jim Moriarty rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t.”

“Would you?”

Jim smiles. “I’m not a Bond villain, Colonel Moran. If I wanted you dead I wouldn’t stop by in person to do it.” He casts an eye around the flat. “Not to Hackney, anyway.”

Sebastian looks the man up and down. “If you’re offering me a job, do it quickly.”

“Name’s Jim Moriarty, since you didn’t ask.”

“Sebastian Moran.”

Jim grins, wide and glittering. “You’re not an omega.”

Sebastian stiffens for half a second. “Keen eye you’ve got there. Right clever of you, considering my scent, my birth certificate and _me_ all say I’m an alpha.”

“No, no.” Jim shakes his head and wrinkles his nose. “You weren’t once.”

Sebastian goes very still.

Jim studies him with glittering eyes. _“And_ you’re queer. Oh, that’s lovely.”

“How d’you figure that?”

Jim smiles. “You’re looking.”

Sebastian’s jaw tightens. “I fuck omegas.”

“You fuck omegas _too.”_

Sebastian scowls. “Sod off.”

Jim laughs. “Sweet.” He taps his fingers on his chin. “Can I keep you?”

Sebastian doesn’t lower his gun. “I’m not cheap.”

Jim’s head tilts to the side. His smile widens. “Nor am I.”

\---

Sebastian was on hormones for a few years, which grew him a knot but didn’t stop his heats. After a few years the suppressants stopped working. They do sometimes, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Every system is different.

(Sebastian can pinpoint the precise moment they stopped working. It’s on the hospital admission papers of his bunkmate and on the records of his dishonorable discharge.)

About four times a year he has to hole up in his room for a week and glut himself on whatever he can shove up his arse. It makes him want to carve out bits of himself with a knife and scrub his skin raw.

(He doesn’t think about the times it makes him feel absolutely luxurious, like he could come just from the sweet slide of silk on his bare skin, or how the slick sensation of lubrication sluicing out between his legs is the single most _exquisite_ thing he’s ever felt.)

\---

The pretty ginger omega woman at the bar is in proestrus. Sebastian knows this because even from half the room away, it’s making his eyelids droop and his stomach churn and his cock fill stiff as a rod. He blinks slowly.

Jim is watching. He smiles. “Even when you’re boring you’re not,” he says.

Sebastian frowns. “Don’t tell me you don’t smell that.”

Jim looks scornful. “Please.”

Sebastian takes a quick look around, making sure he’s not the only one responding. Sure enough, every alpha in the place is adjusting his trousers, and one alpha woman has just approached the redhead with an unmistakable swagger in her stride. Sebastian shakes his head. “Jesus, boss, what are you _on?”_

He rolls his eyes. “On alphas, mostly. And occasionally under them.”

Sebastian isn’t exactly surprised. Jim hardly comes off as entirely straight, after all. Sebastian just didn’t expect him to be quite so...blokey about it.

Then he readjusts, and it’s back to the usual. “Don’t tell me you can’t control yourself,” he drawls. “If you’re _that_ sort of hetter, I’ll--”

“I’m fine,” Sebastian says. “Just--a second.”

Jim narrows his eyes. Sebastian’s eyes slide to the side. He clears his throat and tactfully tugs the crotch of his trousers.

“Fine. Lets go.”

\---

Some days, the only thing that keeps Sebastian from breaking his boss’s smirking face is the absolute certainty that it would be the last thing he ever did. 

“Do you ever wish I was an omega?” Jim says, drawing his fingertips up Sebastian’s bare arm from wrist to shoulder.

Sebastian, in turn, is on his stomach on the roof of a bank, squinting through a scope at the back door of a fine theater from which an absurdly wealthy, inconveniently moralistic government official and her lover are about to exit. He doesn’t scowl, because he’s concentrating. “No.”

“You prefer sex with omegas, especially omegas in heat. It makes you feel powerful.”

“I prefer shooting people without overdressed twats fucking up my aim.”

The door opens. They’re standing just inside, talking to someone. Sebastian’s senses light up.

“I can make you feel powerful,” Jim breathes. His lips are _right_ up against Sebastian’s ear. Goosebumps ripple down the back of his neck. “Watch me.”

The woman steps out of the doorway. Sebastian squeezes the trigger. The woman drops.

Jim strokes the back of his neck. “Lovely,” he says, and a chill shudders down Sebastian’s spine.

\---

“Your father's died,” Jim pronounces lazily from across the breakfast table. “In prison. Cancer.”

Sebastian shrugs. “Hadn’t gotten a letter in a while.”

The smile Jim gives him is too predatory to be really fond, but that’s the general feeling to it. Fond and a bit proud, like a child showing off the balisong he found in a bin. “What are you doing next week?”

“Was there supposed to be a segue there?” Sebastian says around a mouthful of toast, because he knows it drives Jim spare.

Jim’s pleased-cat grin broadens. “Yeeees,” he singsongs.

“You know bloody well what I’m doing. Fuck off.”

Jim’s eyes widen innocently. “I’m sure you’re not scheduled for anything.”

“And you schedule my life.”

“If you think so.”

“I don’t.”

“I know.”

Sebastian lets it drop. _He’s_ not really the one letting it drop, of course, but Jim lets him have his delusions. He knows not to keep his tiger on too short a leash.

\---

Sebastian can feel it creeping up on him. The sudden, ravenous appetite is first. He eats through half his fridge, sleeps for four hours, eats for another two and then sleeps another eight.

He doesn’t see or hear from Jim once during the whole thing. He’s got a ransom demand to broker in Taiwan, Sebastian remembers, as he digs into his third takeaway in an hour. And Sebastian is hardly Jim’s only employee.

_But I’m different,_ he thinks, as he’s going to bed on the fifth day. Something ferocious and possessive and fiercely _alpha_ is unfurling in his chest even as his body surrenders to the cruel trick of nature that gave him a cunt.

_He’s not_ theirs. _He belongs_ here, _he_ needs _to be here, with me. Under me. On me. Tight arse spreading push my dick in knot til he screams--long thick cock sticking me deep can’t move can’t breathe, so very fucking good--_

Sebastian groans and clenches his fist as his stomach cramps deliciously and something trickles between his legs onto the sheets.

\---

Jim gets back hours after it’s over, breezing into Sebastian’s flat looking neat as ever.

“How was Taiwan?” Sebastian asks.

Jim twists his mouth into a pained expression.

“Sympathies,” Sebastian says, expressing nothing of the sort.

Jim flops onto the settee. “What are you doing? I need you dressed; we’re going to Tibet.”

\---

Charlie Milverton is playing with fire. The past fifteen minutes, he’s been verbally abusing queer alphas, likening them to a wide variety of barnyard animals. The word “faggot” has been used liberally, often preceded by qualifying adjectives such as “motherfucking” and “cocksucking” or succeeding nouns like “slut” and “bitch” and “freak.” Jim is more entertained than anything. He’s playing along, drawing Milverton out, luring him deeper into the verbal hole he’s digging.

Sebastian, on the other hand, is going red and tightening a white-knuckled hand on the knife in his right coat pocket. Jim spares him a mildly amused glance that implies, _“this is why I talk to the clients and you sit by a door and look dangerous.”_

“Does it bother you?” he asks during the drive back to the flat. “He’ll be dead in a month, you realize.”

Sebastian does realize. He also knows that he will not be the one to do the deed, regardless of how badly he wants to skin Milverton like a squirrel.

“Poor tiger,” Jim says with a mocking little pout. “The mean man hurt his feelings.”

Sebastian’s jaw stiffens.

“Your mother called you a faggot, didn’t she, Basher? Before you bashed her head in.”

Sebastian pulls in a slow breath through his teeth.

“Your bunkmate called you a freak when he smelled you, equal parts omega in heat and alpha in rut. Didn’t he? Did he promise to fuck the _wrong_ right out of you? Did you want him to? In the moment after he grabbed you by the neck and before you knifed him in the side, did you wish he’d pin you down and stuff you full of cock?”

Sebastian feels his face flushing vermilion and clamps his hands down on the steering wheel. _“I will kill you,”_ he snarls.

Jim laughs softly. “No, you won’t.”

He doesn’t.

Instead, he leaves Jim in their Conduit Street flat and stalks off in search of a dirty card game and a bar fight.

\---

If a tiger is fatally wounded but not outright killed, she’ll slink off, snarling, to die alone in quiet dignity. Whether or not you’d like to say you saw the lights go out of her eyes, it’s a healthier decision to wait it out and track her to where she drops than risk alerting the beast to your presence while she still lives and breathes. A tiger’s death rattle is a snarl of rage and a swipe of her claws, whether you’re creeping up with a knife or a tourniquet.

Sebastian’s seen more than one misguided do-gooder meet a messy end that way. Hell, he’s finished off a few of his own. He’s suffered the sort of doe-eyed darlings who fancy themselves the balm to soothe a wild soul. They’ve all of them found out quickly that Sebastian Moran makes a poor pet project.

Jim Moriarty keeps pets in a different sort of way. He tears out stitches, sinks in his teeth, and leans in close to watch Sebastian bleed, mouth red and grin wild. And Sebastian submits.

\---

Irene Adler is a problem.

She and Jim keep having dinner together and discussing their mutual infatuation with the world’s only consulting detective. Sebastian, naturally, is on hand every time, sitting a few discreet tables away and casually scanning for threats.

He’s no idea why the situation makes him wildly jealous, as a matter of fact. Jim and Adler are both queer alphas, so it could be that. But they’re both well and truly besotted with Sherlock Holmes and definitely not each other.

Only, it’s not Holmes that’s bothering him either. Holmes was in the picture long before Adler, and it never bothered Sebastian before. Maybe it’s just that Adler is about as perceptive as Jim is himself, and Sebastian’s had quite enough of people who can look at him once and tell what he’s got in his pants.

_Too many bloody geniuses,_ Sebastian thinks idly, eyes skirting past Irene, who’s wearing a sleek purple dress with little more than ribbons for a back. Her hair is loose. She looks deceptively small and soft, qualities she is using to charm a sallow-looking man in a cheap tuxedo.

“That’s a trap if ever I saw one,” he remarks to Jim.

They’re at some kind of charity benefit at the Greek embassy. Jim needs to remove a particularly nasty omega man named Kratides who’s been holed up there for immunity. For their ends, they have borrowed Ms. Adler, who owes them a favor for the dead body Jim and Sebastian are about to supply.

Jim makes an amused noise that’s too dark to call a laugh. “She’s got him already. You’d fuck her, wouldn’t you, Seb?”

Sebastian’s on the job, and he doesn’t startle easily when he’s working. Nevertheless, he’s...arrested. “Excuse me?”

“Adler. You’d fuck her.”

“Not hardly,” Sebastian says immediately. “When it comes to places I’d like to stick my cock, I’d rather take Kali’s Kitten.” He _has_ stuck his cock _on_ Kali’s Kitten, as a matter of fact. At least, on the thick fur rug on the floor of their flat. Just the once, mind. Drunk, and in heat. Not unreasonable.

Jim tuts disapprovingly. “Please, Sebby. Hyperbole gives me a headache.”

“Point stands.”

“So you wouldn’t?”

“Not with a gun to my head.”

Jim smirks. “Wouldn’t that be something,” he purrs.

Irene Adler saunters over with a drink in hand. It’s in a cocktail glass, was served by a cocktail waiter and looks for all the world like a cocktail, but Sebastian is too well-acquainted with _that bitch_ to believe she’d drink on the job.

“He’s proving reluctant,” she says, looking entirely unconcerned. “I realize it’s crass of me to bring up finances, but I should remind you I’m not inexpensive.”

Jim sighs. “You’ll get what you want.”

Irene hums in approval, runs her thumb over her lower lip and smiles, slow and catlike. Parts of Sebastian take interest. Other parts of him wrestle them down with a firm rap across the wrists and a sharp reminder of why (contrary to all natural inclinations) tangling with sharp-eyed, frequently armed alpha women is a poorly-advised decision.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Her eyes linger on Sebastian for a moment before she slinks away, back to her fool omega diplomat. Jim has fixed his eyes on Sebastian as well.

Sebastian sighs and rolls his own. “Oh, don’t bloody tell me, I know what’s she’s doing, I _know_ she’s on the game. I said I’d rather fuck Kali’s Kitten, didn’t I?”

“Would you?” Jim says sharply. He clamps a hand down on Sebastian’s arm.

Sebastian’s mouth tenses. “Absolutely.”

Jim settles back into himself with a satisfied smirk. “Good. By the by, I need you to fuck the Adler bitch.”

\---

“You’re getting rid of me,” Sebastian snaps, when Jim has given him his directions.  “For-- _her.”_

Jim looks pained. “I’ve seen your Oxford papers; I know you’ve the capacity to think. If I wanted to make it look like that bitch was dead, I’d do it. Take a moment and use your head, if the repeated concussions haven’t rendered it useless. _Think_. Why would I fake a death _badly?”_

It really isn’t so difficult to realize when it’s put that way.

“Who needs to think Irene Adler is dead? Who needs to think she’s faking it? Who needs to believe she’s faking it for _looooove?”_ Jim says with exaggerated slowness and raised eyebrows, as if he’s giving a particularly morbid lecture to a classroom of primary schoolers.

“I’ve _got_ it, thanks,” Sebastian snaps.

Jim rolls his eyes. “Oh, he lives.”

“Fuck you.”

“Mm, I don’t think so.”

\---

They make an excellent show of playing at secret lovers, meeting under poorly-contrived business purposes and snogging desperately in darkened alleys only just within view of CCTV cameras.

“Do make it look good,” Irene purrs.

Sebastian snarls and smears his mouth down her neck. Irene gasps and clutches the back of his neck. Sebastian bites too hard.

The farce climaxes with a flamboyant fight that starts on a public street in broad daylight before moving inside. The windows are left open. Shouts, smashing noises and screams are perfectly audible as far as the street below. Irene deploys her phone. Sebastian deploys the fake body. Forty-five minutes after that, they board a private boat to a small island in the English Channel.

There is a comfortable house there. It’s got water, power, cable television, wireless internet, a fully-stocked kitchen, dining room, two bathrooms--and one bedroom.

“I’m sleeping on the couch,” Sebastian announces immediately.

Irene laughs. “If you like.”

She looks terribly pleased with herself for someone who is, at the moment, entirely reliant on the firm for her very life. Sebastian scowls at her receding back.

\---

Twelve hours later, Sebastian realizes just what is making Irene so very smug.

He hates that she sensed it before he did. It’s his body, after all. He hates that this is going to fuck up their schedule by five days at minimum. He hates that he hasn’t got any of his toys and is thus going to have to make do with fingers and whatever he can find to shove up there.

More than anything, he _loathes_ his body at the moment.

Sebastian curls in on himself. _Jim, he needs to call Jim._ He reaches for his phone and knocks it off the bedside. Cursing, he rolls over and gropes blindly under the bed.

Suddenly, there’s a rush of scent that makes him want to collapse back and _beg_.

Instead, he bares his teeth and hisses. “Fuck off.”

Irene’s eyelids look heavy. Her pupils are dilated, and she’s wearing a green dressing gown and nothing else. “Poor thing,” she says.

She bends, plucks up his phone, and places it next to his ear. She strokes the backs of her fingers over his cheek. He slaps her hand away.

“No need for that, darling,” she says. “I prefer my mates eager and obedient. Breaking you would certainly be...interesting, but the time investment just isn’t feasible. Ta.”

She swishes out the door, which clicks shut and locks behind her.

Sebastian wipes his hand clean on the sheet and grabs his phone. Jim picks up on the second ring.

“What is--oh _God,_ you aren’t. Don’t tell me.”

Sebastian groans.

“I hope you realize this is highly irregular. Not to mention a _massive_ inconvenience.”

Sebastian licks his lips. “I--just need--”

“Lord. Can’t you make do with Adler?”

Sebastian closes his eyes and swallows, because he’s far enough in that spreading it for that _bitch_ doesn’t sound entirely out of the question. “She won’t,” he says.

Jim snorts. “Liar.” He sighs, making special effort to sound long-suffering and put-upon. “Fine. I’ll send someone.”

Sebastian lets out a breath. _Tall, strong, and fit, please, and equipped with a knot the size of a baseball._ “How long?”

“You’re at least half an hour from any kind of civilization, idiot. Ninety minutes at the minimum.”

_“Fuck.”_

“Don’t you _dare_ complain to me, Moran,” Jim says darkly. “There’s a cabinet in the bathroom. Go sedate yourself.”

The line goes dead.

Sleep during heats is fitful and unpleasant. For Sebastian, it means dreams full of pain he wants to hate but doesn’t, unintelligible whispers that should make him afraid and only make the fire in the pit of his stomach burn hotter.

He wakes to a tremor in his midsection and a waft of alpha. He rolls over onto his back and lifts his head enough to get a look.

“Good evening, darling.”

As soon as Sebastian’s vision clears enough for him to focus, he squeezes his eyes tightly shut and thumps his head against the pillow.

She’s more “handsome” than strictly “beautiful,” with the kind of attractiveness women only get past forty or so. Her hair is dyed a dark red and piled high in curls like an old-fashioned pinup girl. She lets her coat drop to the floor. Underneath, she’s wearing nothing but a lacy violet bustier with matching purple knickers, suspenders, stockings and black stilettos. (The shoes, not the knives--although Sebastian’s of the opinion that it’s safest to expect both.) There’s a promising bulge in the front of those knickers. Sebastian swallows hard.

“Pleased?” she purrs. “Your friend was very specific.”

_Of course he was._

Face burning, Sebastian shucks his pants and rolls over onto his front. It won’t be so bad that way, as long as he can’t see her face, that horribly familiar-looking face. Her voice isn’t quite right, after all.

The alpha woman climbs lithely onto the bed. “He said you like it rough,” she says.

It’s barely a question, just enough of a lift to the sentence to allow room for Sebastian to disagree. Is he meant to answer?

The woman gets her hand into his hair and yanks back, hard. She laughs. “Ooh, you do, don’t you? Little _slut.”_

That’ll be a yes, then. Of course they’d make him cop to it.

“Yeah,” he chokes out.

“Perfect,” she murmurs, and shoves his head back down.

_Her hair is probably longer,_ Sebastian thinks. That’ll be why it’s pinned up. And she’s too thin. Her jawline is too sharp.

Two hours later, he doesn’t notice anymore.

Two days later, he calls her “Mother.”

\---

When their two weeks are up, Irene swans off to do...whatever it is she’s doing with Moriarty’s detective. Something to do with the risky quantities of compromising information she has about her person. Sebastian returns to Conduit Street. Jim is out. Sebastian takes the chance to unpack and put his clothes through the laundry.

Jim comes home as Sebastian’s unloading the dryer. He stomps his boots free of snow on the landing. Sebastian thinks for a moment that Jim hasn’t even noticed he’s back, but of course that’s ridiculous.

“If you’ve put one of my shirts through the dryer on high again, I’ll liquify your XBOX,” Jim calls over his shoulder.

Sebastian checks the laundry later and finds a pair of lacy purple knickers. They still smell a bit of heat and rut and musk. He swallows, shuts his eyes for a moment, and then bins them.

\---

Jim doesn’t get his hands dirty, by and large. It has something to do with the trappings of power and symbolic authority and medieval theories on rule of law. Sebastian’s sat through the lecture a dozen times. It boils down to that The Boss is The Boss, and The Boss is strictly a managerial figure.

Of course, in the case of the consulting criminal, the top position is not _entirely_ managerial. There are always exceptions. Examples to make, displays to put on and the like.

In this instance, the display ended with a high-speed car chase in which Jim was drafted as emergency driver while Sebastian picked off their pursuers with his custom Webley.

“Left,” Jim barks, half a second before he swerves.

Thanks to the maneuver, the bullet clips Sebastian’s shoulder instead of punching through his trachea. He grimaces and returns the shot. This time, the driver drops. Sebastian grins.

“Pull off.”

“They--”

_“Pull off!”_

Jim wrenches the wheel to the right. They scrape against the barrier, but miss getting rammed by the car that had previously been in hot pursuit. It careens off down the empty road for another few hundred yards before turning sharply left, flipping onto its side and rolling upside down. It rocks back and forth, engine still roaring.

Sebastian laughs. He sets his Webley on the backseat and slides down, laughing and laughing.

Jim is sending a text. “I’ve called for a ride.”

Sebastian lets out another giggle. “Fuck. Ow.” He giggles again and shucks off his shirt. “Give me your pocket square.”

Jim makes a face, but does it. It’s the only article of clothing on either of them that’s in any state to be making contact with an open wound. He takes it and presses it to his shoulder.

“Should I text Dr. Mortimer, or can you do it yourself?” Jim asks. He won’t look away from the wound. Probably figuring how to get the blood out of a silk pocket square, the ponce. (A 1:9 solution of hydrogen peroxide and water will do the trick, by the by.)

Sebastian shakes his head. “I can stitch it.”

He can’t, though. Stitches are properly a two-handed job, and even Sebastian’s got trouble managing a half-circle needle with his non-dominant hand. He takes another swig of whiskey, lines up the point, and moves. He stabs himself straight in the center of the open cut.

_“Fuck!”_

“Sweet Lord, it’d be easier to let you bleed out and dispose of the body,” Jim says, snapping on a pair of blue nitrile gloves.

Sebastian regards him warily. “Have you ever stitched anybody?”

Jim shrugs.

“Anybody who’s still alive.”

“The principles are the same.” He plucks the needle from Sebastian’s fingers. “Don’t move.”

Sebastian screws up his face, but doesn’t wince. Jim stitches with quick efficiency and no sympathy. It doesn’t take long.

“Gauze and tape.”

Sebastian places the gauze and watches Jim tape it down. “There you are,” he says. “I’ve taken your suture virginity.”

Jim rolls his eyes. “You’re drunk.”

“Fucking shit yes I am.”

“Not to mention suffering from the biochemical aftereffects of a serious adrenaline rush.”

“Mm,” Sebastian agrees.

Jim lays a hand over the gauze and presses down. Sebastian hisses, baring his teeth, and Jim takes the opening to dart in and kiss him.

Jim kisses like he stitches, brutal and sharp and without compassion. Sebastian doesn’t know whether to fight him off or just fight back.

Jim pulls back and slaps him in the face. Sebastian jerks away.

“What the _fuck_ are you--”

“Stop thinking,” Jim orders, and goes back to kissing him. 

Sebastian sneers against Jim’s mouth. Jim retributively bites Sebastian’s lip and squeezes his arm again. The flare of pain is sharp and searing and not nearly enough for Sebastian to want to stop.

Jim lifts his hand away, breaks the contact between their bodies and turns toward the door.

“Don’t you dare rip those out early,” he says. “And wash my bloody pocket square or I’ll rip your ear off.”

The door shuts behind him.

\---

The firm does not have a complaints department. Accordingly, its employees have been forced to find alternative outlets into which they can vent their frustrations. Outlets vary from employee to employee and range widely in creativity, legality and physicality. Perhaps surprisingly, the most popular is the traditional pint with one’s office friends.

Sebastian doesn’t have friends in the traditional sense. “Friends” implies a certain amount of concerted maintenance and emotional commitment. He does have comrades, brothers-in-arms of a sort. One of these is Em Jessup, a large omega woman who’s nearly as good a shot as Sebastian and at least as good a tracker. They were first acquainted poaching apes in the Sudan, back when Em was short for Emmett rather than Emily. When Sebastian heard she was in town again, he put in a word with Jim and they took her on. It was Em who first invited Sebastian down to the Xeniades for a pint and a grumble, but neither of them could recall when it had become a Thursday night habit.

“I heard the Adler woman skipped town,” Em says, taking a ladylike sip of her gin. “The Professor can’t be pleased.”

Sebastian snorts. In fact, _that bitch,_ as Jim has taken to referring to her, is not long for this mortal coil. At this very moment, local agents in Karachi are closing in, armed with enough weaponry to slice off thirty heads full of damning information. But that’s a business best kept secret for the time being, so Sebastian settles for a suggestive raised eyebrow that Em can interpret however she sees fit.

Em grins. “Before she swanned off, did you…?”

Sebastian snorts. “Not even in heat.”

This is more accurate than he cares to admit. He suspects Em picks up on it, judging from the knowing relaxation of the lines around her eyes.

But she laughs. “Jesus, Basher. The Devil himself couldn’t seduce you if you’d set your mind against it.” She shrugged. “But then, living with the Devil, I expect you get used to it.”

That strikes far too close to home. Sebastian’s face sours and he takes a long swig.

“I’m getting it out,” he says. “The whole useless fucking bundle. No more heats. I’m finished.”

Em shrugs. “If that’s what you want.”

Sebastian scowls and takes another drink. It’s not, of course, and Em is one of maybe two people on the planet who know it. It’s not heat he hates, after all, not exactly. It’s the reminder that his body is not what he knows he is. And that, he hates absolutely.

The rest? He’s...not sure. He’s not even sure what “the rest” encompasses. He hasn’t got the words.

“Speaking of the devil,” Em says, “how is he?”

Sebastian shrugs. “He is.”

“Y’know, I’ve been wondering--what do you do with him during…”

“He leaves,” Sebastian says shortly.

Em takes another sip and doesn’t look Sebastian in the eyes.

Sebastian reminds Em that it’s her week to pay the tab and orders another drink.

\---

He stumbles back in at quarter to four, strips off his shirt and trousers, collapses on the couch and passes out more or less immediately.

He dreams a little. His father’s voice, the way he whispered bedtime stories like secrets and the way he cried _“I had to, she hurt him, I had to”_ in Farsi as they cuffed him and led him away. His grandfather’s house, large and cold, and the look on his grandfather’s face when he caught Sebastian with Laurence Kim.

Oh, Laurence, he of the curly blond hair and wide blue eyes and luscious bum. He’d been on the latter side of the development curve, having his first heat at a fairly late seventeen. Sebastian helped him through it. Laurence wasn’t his first, but he was the first to know Sebastian wasn’t an omega. He’d taken it with surprising aplomb. He was already dating a queer biracial juvenile offender; how different could this be?

It was different enough to Sebastian Senior. The other Sebastian was not an involved parent. He expressed only quiet disappointment with the shoplifting and fights and underage drinking. He was even willing to overlook the hormones and the scent washes and the boys and girls Sebastian Junior brought home, so long as reasonable discretion was exercised. He was less inclined to forgive after catching his grandson _in flagrante delicto_ in the dining room with an omega in heat. When Sebastian threw in his face that really, this was probably the most _heterosexual_ relationship he’d ever been in, his grandfather snapped. It had been a way of coping with what had happened, he’d thought. Adopting alpha mannerisms and trying to pass as a way to protect himself. It had to end. He was willing to pay for the therapy, he said. The least he could do after what his daughter had done.

Sebastian spat in his face and enlisted a week later. Chances are good that his grandfather’s rotting in his grave by now, by the grace of God.

Jesus, he hasn’t thought of Laurence in years. The memories are mostly fond. Mediocre lay, but the boy could suck dick like a champ. Sebastian still pops a stiffy at the memory of those lovely, lush lips closing around his crown and that clever tongue swirling round the tip. He smiles blissfully and squeezes his thickening prick through his pants.

Sebastian thinks of Laurence, of combing his fingers through that lovely mess of yellow curls and pulling that clever mouth down onto him. He thinks of how Laurence would look up at him to see if he was enjoying it, blue eyes watery and limpid and fucked-out. He groans and wriggles his hand into his shorts.

“Are you thinking of me yet?”

Sebastian’s eyes fly open.

Jim is perched on the edge of the coffee table barely a foot away. He’s leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, fingers steepled in front of his face, lips parted and eyes narrowed. Considering. Contemplating.

Sebastian struggles up into a sitting position and blinks slowly. “What?”

Jim rolls his eyes. “You would have thought of me. Not _right_ then, but you were going to. I’m saving you the trouble.” He slides off the coffee table and onto his knees.

“What are you--”

Jim hooks his fingers under the waistband of Sebastian’s shorts. “Lift.”

Drowsily, Sebastian lifts his hips up so Jim can peel his briefs off and down. With brisk efficiency, Jim lifts Sebastian’s feet out of the shorts puddled around his ankles.

Just like that, he’s naked.

He tries not to think of how many other employees Jim’s done this to, and what happened to them after, and finds that neither thought turns him off. Not “off” at all.

Jim presses at the insides of Sebastian’s knees. He lets them fall open with a small nasal inhalation, not even the shadow of a gasp. Jim holds onto Sebastian’s hip and brushes a thumb over the outline of his iliac crest. Sebastian shudders. Jim’s lips curl in a dark, pleased little smile. His other hand wraps around the base of Sebastian’s shaft. Sebastian barely has time to process before Jim leans forward and takes him in his mouth.

Sebastian’s head drops onto the back of the couch. He groans with relief and rocks his hips up, just a little. Jim’s hold on his hip tightens. Fingernails dig in. Sebastian stills, and the hand lets up.

Jim pulls mostly off and licks at the exposed head of Sebastian’s cock. He experiments, lapping around and up and down, flicking the tip of his tongue over the slit. Sebastian jerks helplessly and moans. Jim’s lips close around his cock again. He works his tongue under the foreskin and sucks.

“Oh, Jesus,” Sebastian says.

Jim starts to move, slow and shallow, using his hand to work what his mouth won’t reach. Sebastian clutches at the arm of the sofa and presses his other hand to his mouth. He needs to keep his hands occupied or he’s going to take Jim by the hair and fuck his mouth until he comes and he does _not_ want to know what the repercussions to that would be.

Sebastian slouches further down on the couch and tries not to writhe. Jim releases his grip on Sebastian’s hipbone. Sebastian is just thinking _where’d he--what is he--_ when the unaccounted-for hand snakes up under Jim’s mouth and cups his balls.

“Oh--fuck, I am _going to fucking come.”_

(Sebastian doesn’t want to know what happens to people who don’t warn Jim Moriarty that they’re about to come in his mouth.)

He isn’t, not quite yet, but that timetable moves up when one finger of the hand cupping his balls creeps back to press at his arsehole. Sebastian gasps and bucks up. Jim doesn’t punish him this time, just moves faster and sucks harder, doing-- _something_ with his tongue on the upstroke. Flicking it up under the crown or something. Sebastian bites the base of his thumb. The head of his cock bounces off the back of Jim’s throat. He coughs reflexively around his mouthful. Instantly, Sebastian feels his balls tightening.

“Oh fucking God, I’m _coming.”_

Jim pulls off with a wet pop and jerks him off quickly and ruthlessly, studying him with eyes that are no less predatory for the tears watering up at their corners. Sebastian inhales sharply. His cock twitches once and then he’s coming hard and loud, hips jerking and fingernails digging into his palms.

He collapses back onto the couch. “Jesus,” he pants. “You’re--”

Jim seizes Sebastian tightly by the throat.

Sebastian jerks reflexively, but doesn’t fight back. Jim crawls up onto the sofa, straddles Sebastian’s thighs and doesn’t relax his grip on his windpipe.

“What wouldn’t you let me do?” he says, and then: “Open my trousers.”

Jim does.

Inside, Jim is hard and leaking. Sebastian can’t look to see how big he is, but considering he’s got big hands with long fingers and his middle finger and thumb only just meet--

“Make me come,” Jim says, sounding less bored than Sebastian has ever heard him.

It’s the last thing he says. Sebastian learns what Jim wants by reading intent into the air he’s allowed, knows he’s doing right when he can breathe. Jim likes it slower than Sebastian would be able to stand, then nearly fast enough to cramp up his arm, and then slowly again. Jim’s face barely changes. His forehead smooths out and his lips part, with little of the smug smirk they usually have. Sebastian doesn’t realize Jim is coming until the hand at his throat cuts his air off completely. Jim’s eyes flutter shut, and for a moment his face relaxes in utter bliss. His cock pulses inside his pants for several long seconds before, with a little sigh, he sits back onto the coffee table with a broad, satisfied smile.

“You’ve got a heat in two weeks,” he says, and goes to bed.

\---

It comes on fast and hard. Sebastian has barely two days’ worth of warning before he wakes up in a wet patch.

He groans and squeezes his thighs together. It’ll be bad this time. It always is when there’s not much prep. But he’s got enough brain cells left functioning to know that he’s got to hold off on satiating the ache for a little while longer. The sooner he starts, the sooner he won’t be able to stop.

He throws off the covers, rolls to his feet, stumbles into the bathroom and switches the water on. He doesn’t wait for the tub to fill, just slides in and lets the water rise up around him until it’s as high as it’ll go. The water eases half the ache, washes out the smell of omega that’s driving the alpha in him to distraction.

Sebastian wanks in the bath, orgasm too quick to satisfy. The thought of terrycloth on his skin gives him minor heart palpitations, so he dries himself off on his bathrobe and falls facedown back into bed stark naked. He rubs his face against the pillows and groans in frustration. He’s hard again _already,_ knot flushed and engorged with blood.

“Poor tiger.”

Sebastian grimaces and rolls onto his back. Jim climbs onto the bed, crouching over him on all fours like an incubus.

“Do you want me to?” Jim says lazily. He brushes the backs of two fingers down Sebastian’s flank. He shivers. “Fuck you, that is.”

_Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know._

“Fuck yes,” he says, wrapping a hand around Jim’s head and wrestling him down into a kiss.

Jim grins against his mouth and laughs a little. Sebastian bites his lip in retribution. Jim bites back. Sebastian rolls his hips up.

“None of that, now,” Jim says.

Sebastian knows he could take Jim in a fair fight, but it’s hardly a fair fight at the moment. When Jim seizes him by the shoulder and rolls him forcibly onto his front, Sebastian’s reaction is to give in, to rise up onto his hands and knees and grind his arse greedily back.

“Lord, you’re a slut for it.”

His voice is still devastatingly clear. Jesus, Sebastian would be a fucking mess with this much heat reeking in the air. _Is_ a mess. This isn’t just the omega pheromones poisoning his system, it’s the alpha reaction. His knot’s under the impression that there’s an omega ripe for the plucking in the vicinity and would like nothing better than to oblige it. But then, eau de omega does nothing for Jim.

_That means--it’s you. All you he wants._

Sebastian moans.

Jim strokes a hand down his back. “Heat _and_ rut. Oh, the things I could do to you.”

Sebastian bites the base of his thumb before he says something truly stupid, like “yes, I want it all.” He doesn’t want to know what Jim Moriarty has to restrain himself from doing.

“Your mother,” Jim says idly, pressing a hand into the base of Sebastian’s spine. It deepens the curve of his back and angles his arse up. Sebastian whines through his teeth. “Why did you do it?”

Sebastian just shakes his head. He can’t. Not now, at least. He’s pretty sure his verbal capabilities have entirely fled aside from a few essentials, like _“now,”_ and _“fuck,”_ and _“yes,”_ and _“harder.”_

“Kid in your first heat? You _wanted_ it. You’d have been _gagging_ for a knot. You’re gagging for it now. It wouldn’t matter that you didn’t want her. Once heat kicked into high gear, anything with a knot looks good. You’d have wanted to drop and present the second-- _oh,”_ he breathes.

His hands rub up and down Sebastian’s back. It’s gentle. Deceptively gentle. Sebastian wants rough. He smothers his moan in the pillow.

“You didn’t kill her because you didn’t want it.” He spreads Sebastian’s cheeks apart with his thumbs. The tip of Jim’s cock presses against Sebastian’s hole. Sebastian squirms. Jim smacks him sharply on the side. “You killed her because you _did.”_

Jim eases forward. The head of his cock slips in.

Sebastian gasps and tries to push back. Jim slaps his flank again.

“Keep still,” Jim says. He doesn’t need to add “or I’ll make you.”

And that’s enough of that.

Sebastian doesn’t consciously decide to fight, but halfway through he realizes he’s wrestling Jim down onto his back and crawling up his legs and getting up over his thighs and groping behind him to steady Jim’s prick with sticky fingers as the tip slips in--

“Oh, you feel _so fucking good,”_ Sebastian groans, and sinks down.

Jim clutches his hips and purrs. Sebastian bounces down onto Jim’s swelling knot. There’s an unbearable feeling of broadening inside of him. His face flushes red as he moans, deep and low and fucking _hungry_.

_“Move,”_ Jim snaps, and shoves up.

Sebastian arches and gasps. Jim makes a pleased little noise and shifts his hips, settling inside of the tight, slick heat. Sebastian’s breath breaks in a soft, dissatisfied grunt. Jim smiles, eyes heavy-lidded and dark but glittering with malice. Something surges in him, so strong that all Sebastian can do is grind down and pant.

“So _fucking_ good,” he sighs. He could stay just there forever, he thinks, just sitting and being full, shuddering his way through the tremors.

Jim disagrees.

With a snarl on his lips, he twists to the side and reaches into the bedside table. The movement triggers another spasm, so Sebastian’s shaking and shouting at the exquisite waves of _almost-so-close-not-quite-there_ pleasure rolling through him while Jim is getting...whatever it is from the drawer. He’s still moaning and shivering when Jim touches it to the skin just under his solar plexus, and then he realizes what it is.

Jim has a few affectations. He’s got his custom PC, the one for calculations with more symbols than numbers and the cooling system like a fucking MRI machine. He’s got his wasps, buzzing away in their climate-controlled hive in the hall closet.

And he’s got his blades.

His collection includes some of the sharpest in the world, he claims, and Sebastian doesn’t doubt it. They’re not really weapons, in the strictest sense, although some of them technically are. They’re more...tools. A very specific set of tools for a very specific craftsman, all custom-made and lethal.

There’s the trench knife styled after a Soviet army blade from World War I, the 18-inch, wickedly curved Nepalese kukri, and the reproduction Japanese tanto. There’s his scalpels, with their blades of scientific-grade diamond-edged steel and obsidian, fine enough to cut between cells. There’s the chef’s scimitar of billet-welded modern Damascus steel and the set of titanium alloy kitchen knives: tourné, boning knife, filleting knife. And there’s his favorite: the long slicer, handle inset with a skull of black pearls that glimmer in low light like oil slicks.

Most slicers are made to cut cleanly and quickly through meat. Essentially, so is this one.

The tip digs dangerously into Sebastian’s flesh. He tries to still his trembling limbs and breathe very, very steadily. He knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jim would have no qualms about pushing the blade up into his flesh, parting his skin like milk fat and sliding it through muscle and into his heart. He thinks about the deadly-sharp knife pressing into his soft tissues and the and moans at the sudden pulse of blood to his prick.

“Move,” Jim says softly.

Sebastian’s caught up for a moment in a spasm. He tries to breathe deeply through it, regain control over his body, but he’s still recovering, his thighs are quivering and uncooperative--

The knife darts to the side. The tip bites into Sebastian’s skin, just a quick little nick under his ribcage. Sebastian flinches away with a hiss, though the blade is so sharp that the pain takes a moment to register. When it does, it’s like a line of fire, a bright point in the haze he’s sinking into.

“I said, _move,”_ Jim growls, and sets his knife back in place, poised to deliver a killing thrust.

Sebastian rocks up slowly, groaning at the loss of the knot and then sighing in relief as he sinks back down.

“Yes,” Jim croons. “Just like that. Good little pet.”

Sebastian wants to lean forward and brace his arms against the headboard, but the knifepoint is still at his core and he doesn’t dare risk it. So he balls his hands into fists and digs the heels into his thighs, working what leverage he can.

His hamstrings are already burning, but the pleasure he’s feeling dwarfs it entirely. He slides himself up and down Jim’s cock, jerking at the sudden sharp shock of his knot fitting in and then being withdrawn before Sebastian’s body can grab hold.

He feels the tremor start to rock him, and tries to lean away from the blade beforehand. All the same, when he’s finished panting through the spasm, there’s a fresh line of red welling up below the other.

“Faster,” Jim snarls. “Harder.”

Teeth bared in a rictus of bestial need, Sebastian obeys.

Jim’s free hand is working Sebastian’s cock, paying special attention to his knot. He’s never been fucked quite like this before, with a stiff cock up his arse and a skilled, attentive hand on his prick. He’s never fucked another alpha during heat before, not since he grew a knot. Jim squeezes, and Sebastian lurches into his grip with a shudder and a cry.

He’s bringing the weight of his whole body down with every thrust, forcing Jim’s knot past the tight ring of resistance, pushing back up, feeling it slip away, and then dropping back down again with brutal force.

Jim’s eyes have narrowed to thin, glimmering slits. His lips are parted and curved up in a small, terrible smile. He looks like he’s deciding which part of Sebastian to serve as the hors d’oeuvres. The thought makes his knot swell and trembles in his gut til he has to grit his teeth and look away as he shakes through another tremor.

There’s a series of small, shallow cuts under his ribs by now. Sebastian’s not entirely sure exactly when they came about. He can’t bring himself to care, not when he’s occupied with pounding himself down onto Jim’s cock.

Jim lets out a little pleased sound and arches up into him. Sebastian whines and twists half away. Jim snarls and slices, opening a deep, thin red mouth along the bottom of Sebastian’s ribcage. Sebastian lets his body drop down and doesn’t pull himself back up. He grinds back and forth, fully impaled, mouth dropping open as breath saws in and out of him. He can feel his orgasm approaching, massive in scale, but can’t quite bring himself to cross the threshold and come. Then Jim throws the knife aside and digs his thumbnail into the long gash just as his other hand tightens around Sebastian’s knot, and with a shocked cry Sebastian gives himself over and starts coming.

His inner muscles contract, tightening around Jim’s knot like a vise and locking him in. Jim grimaces and lets his eyes roll back as his own orgasm coalesces. The rippling contractions are spreading outwards through Sebastian’s entire body, rolling through his thighs and belly and chest and arms and fingers and face. His cock pulses thick come onto Jim’s stomach. He shuts his eyes and shouts his way through the tidal wave of ecstasy that goes on and on, wracking him with pleasure until he can’t breathe or move or think and everything goes white-hot and silent.

When he can bend his spine again, he slumps forward and rests his chin on Jim’s shoulder. He feels entitled to a spot of cuddling after that. More practically, he can’t hold his head up at the moment.

Underneath him, Jim tenses for a moment, then lets out a long sigh.

“I’ve never knotted someone before,” he says conversationally. “Interesting.”

Jim makes an experimental little thrust up. Sebastian moans and shivers at the little aftershocks it stirs up.

Jim idly drags a finger through the trails of blood down Sebastian’s stomach. “We’ll clean it after.” He takes his finger away, studies it for a moment, and then pops it into his mouth to lick it clean.

Sebastian laughs. It’s wheezy and breathless, but still very definitely a laugh. Jim scowls.

“I’ll eat you up, I love you so,” Sebastian says, and keeps laughing.

That night, he does not dream.

\---

Sebastian wakes wet and hot and shivering. He rolls over and rises up onto his knees, intending to fuck himself on Jim whether or not the man’s awake. Naturally, when he straddles his mastermind, he finds Jim’s eyes slitted open and observant.

“When this is over,” he drawls, as Sebastian settles around his swollen knot, “I want to do this to you.”

Sebastian’s knot throbs. He groans, tosses his head back and rides.

It’s more intense in the dark, where he’s nearly blind. Sebastian feels for something to hold on to. He gets the headboard in one hand and Jim’s chest under the other and smears his thumb over a nipple. Jim hisses and bucks up. Sebastian gasps.

“Or on my front,” Jim says, and he’s losing some of that fine, cultured boredom. “You could try to make me scream. I don’t.”

He does a minute later, though, when Sebastian’s arse tightens around him and his knot swells to its full girth and they are locked together in drawn-out ecstasy.

Sebastian lays mostly on top of Jim while they’re knotted. They kiss, which is much less strange than Sebastian expected it to be. It feels slow and lazy and playful, but no less dangerous. Like a cat that could turn on you at any moment.

“I’ve shot creatures that didn’t scratch me half so bad,” he says.

Jim laughs. “I’m not a tiger,” Jim says, and digs a nail into one of the scars on Sebastian’s chest.

_No. There is no beast like you,_ Sebastian thinks, and snarls.

\---

Five days later, Sebastian wakes up sore, but sated. His body is his own again. The smell of cinnamon, toast and eggs indicates that something ought to be eaten in the near future, so he stretches, groans, rolls out of bed and gets dressed.

When he shuffles down the hall into the kitchen, he finds Jim fully clothed and sliding a stack of French toast across the table.

“You’re so nutrition-deprived it’s giving me a headache,” he says.

Sebastian gets them both cutlery and takes a seat. “You want me to finish up the Oldacre case today?” he says, and “Pass me the syrup.”

Jim grins to a face-splitting width. “Do,” he says, and fetches the syrup.

\---

They go back to work.

It’s more or less what he expected. The work is the same. But now, Jim’s flirting carries a bit more weight. Now, when Jim is spotting at his shoulder, afterwards there are lips on his ear and a hand down his pants. Now, when Sebastian makes a pass at a pretty omega woman, Jim doesn’t even bother looking offended. He just smiles and then fucks him raw when they get home. No need to be jealous over what you know is yours.

There’s other things too.

On the seventeenth of April, Sebastian comes home and finds his laptop open and a video paused. He presses the spacebar.

The black screen cuts into a blurry shot of a dark cellar. The camera focuses into clarity, and Sebastian can interpret the image.

There is a man tied to a chair. When his head comes up, Sebastian feels a terrible smile split across his mouth.

When last he saw that face, it was spitting curses as it was born away on a stretcher, swollen red and purple courtesy of the fists of one Colonel Sebastian Moran. He hadn’t been able to stay to watch, as he was being hauled away by a few omega nurses into isolation to ride out his surprise heat. He also hadn’t been able to finish the job.

On the computer screen, Jim steps into the frame. He looks at the camera and smiles, then turns to the man in the chair.

Ninety-six minutes later, the video fizzles back into blackness.

Jim touches his shoulder. “I’d have brought him here, but that would have been...messy,” he says. “Do you like it?”

Sebastian pulls Jim into his lap.

“Happy birthday,” Jim murmurs, then darts forward and kisses him.

\---

Two weeks later, Jim puts five of his six Japanese throwing knives through Sebastian’s headboard and orchestrates a string of fake drunk driving deaths purely to prove that he can. It puts the firm out fifty grand plus Sebastian’s pay. He’s just progressed to plotting the early releases of several formerly interesting ex-clients when Sebastian decides something must be done. Before he resorts to putting hits out on the both of them, though, Jim sets the kitchen on fire.

“What in the name of _bloody fuck_ are you _doing?”_ Sebastian shouts, rushing into the room and spraying the table down.

Jim throws something at his head. Sebastian dodges sideways and the sixth of Jim’s Japanese throwing knives thunks into the wall. Sebastian throws the empty fire extinguisher into the mess of foam and seizes Jim by the shoulders. Jim fights with teeth and nails and low kicks, but Sebastian has size and strength on him. Sebastian gets him pinned in a keylock hold and plants his knee on Jim’s free hand. Jim snarls.

“Knock it off!” Sebastian snaps, _absolutely sure_ they’ll never find his body after this.

But Jim’s body goes limp and his face crumples into misery. _“God,_ just _fuck_ me or something, I can’t _stand_ it anymore, it’s so bloody _boring,_ there’s never going to be anything ever again.”

Sebastian eases off and kneels back. Jim surges up, throws his arms around Sebastian’s shoulders and kisses him fiercely.

Sebastian struggles to remember a time he’s gone from slightly-interested to rock-hard this quickly. He tugs at Jim’s hair and swallows his little grunt of pain.

“It’s in my pocket, get it, do it,” Jim demands, already yanking at Sebastian’s shirt.

Sebastian retrieves the lube from Jim’s trousers seconds before Jim kicks them into the corner with a sob. He rolls over onto his front and rubs his forehead against the back of his wrist.

Sebastian’s first finger goes in easy, and the second, and the third. His heart seizes up.

“You were...you did this yourself,” he says stupidly.

Jim whines. “It was _so quiet._ Come on, come _on.”_

Sebastian slicks himself up quickly. He spreads Jim’s arse wide with one hand and lines himself up with the other. As soon as he’s got the tip in, Jim shoves back.

“Jesus fuck!” Sebastian spits.

Jim lets out a long sigh. “Yes, _just_ like that,” he says.

Sebastian usually likes fast and rough, but this is just too tempting. He takes his time, moving his hips smoothly but with no less force until Jim is clawing at the carpet and crying out.

Sebastian scrapes his nails down Jim’s chest and grimaces. His knot is swollen and inflamed, and _just_ too big to fit into Jim’s tight hole. Jim’s dropped to his elbow so he can pull at his cock with short, quick strokes.

“Do it.”

Sebastian’s breath locks in his chest. “What?”

“Do it, I don’t care if it hurts, I need it. Your knot. Do it.”

“It’ll--”

“DO IT!”

The sudden shout startles Sebastian so much that when he thrusts in with that little extra kick, he’s not entirely sure he meant to. Jim screams and jerks as his body gives way, coming with deep, long pulses. It’s not the same as an omega clamping down, but it has the same effect on Sebastian, who goes stiff with a shout and shakes and shakes until his muscles give out.

He pulls out with a wince and falls to the side. Beside him, Jim is curled in a ball with his fists tucked under his chin.

“Go away,” he says.

\---

Theirs is a non-smoking flat. That rule bends some in the winter, but in the warmer months Jim and Sebastian bow to the landlord’s policies and do their smoking on the balcony. He leans against the railing and peers out into the city. Admiring the view or checking for snipers? Both, probably.

“Get down here.”

Sebastian looks down. Jim is lying on the ground, completely naked, tapping a lit fag against his knee. Sebastian rolls his eyes.

“Why?”

“We’re going to die,” Jim says.

“Well...yes.”

Jim takes a long drag and blows it out slow. “It’s a race. Everything. Everybody trying to be the first or the last to rattle out the air in our lungs and shit our guts out and _die.”_

Sebastian resigns himself to his fate and sits down beside him. “Jesus, what do you do when I’m not here for you to talk at?”

“Speaking physically, we’re all immortal. Conservation of energy and all that. All the heavy elements in our bodies came from stars. They’re all dead now. We’re their legacy.” He snorts. “Christ, that’s a fucking shame. _Humans._ If I was the stars that made  us I’d go supernova on principle. We’re a waste of dead star.”

He chucks his cigarette butt over the balcony, rolls over and pins Sebastian to the ground. Sebastian hisses out a breath, but doesn’t fight.

“You’re not a waste,” Jim says. There’s something in his eyes that makes Sebastian feel vaguely sick inside. “My human.” He tangles his fingers in Sebastian’s hair and kisses him.

Sebastian realizes what he meant too late.

\---

Jim doesn’t leave a note. There’s no phone call.

The cleaners take the body.

Afterwards, Sebastian goes back to the flat. He touches the custom PC for the first time. He runs his fingers over Jim’s blades, and lets his fingers linger just the littlest bit longer on the titanium kitchen slicer. The wasps are gone, he notices, and doesn’t miss them.

All that’s left.

_“You’re not a waste,”_ Sebastian remembers.

Not _all,_ then.

**Author's Note:**

> I really didn't want to write meta things on Sebastian's gender identity here, but I felt it might be a good idea for anybody not familiar with trans issues. I don't want people getting the idea that Seb's gender identity in any way speaks for all nonbinary folks.
> 
> Sebastian was assigned omega at...well, at puberty, not birth, but we'd call it "assigned at birth," and identifies as alpha...mostly. If you were to apply the (yes, already heavily flawed) Kinsey scale to gender identity, saying 0 is alpha and 6 is omega, Sebastian would be about a 1 or a 2. "Genderqueer" is the most accurate label I could think of to assign him, but he would never use it because he's trying to prove something.
> 
> Here's where the tricky stuff sets in. I can't accurately give Seb's gender identity a label because _Sebastian_ can't accurately give his gender identity a label. He identifies as alpha, but he's got doubts. Part of what Jim is latching onto here is those doubts. In his own special, dreadful way, he's decided to help Sebastian resolve those doubts.


End file.
